Get started with Mobile Analytics

Deprecated

Mobile Analytics is now App Monitoring and content about Mobile Analytics is deprecated. For documentation related to these features, please see App Monitoring content, such as Monitoring app usage data.

Here you’ll learn some basics about using Mobile Analytics. You’ll learn how to start the Mobile Analytics portal — your interface to Mobile Analytics. Then you’ll step through how to create an app in Mobile Analytics, and how to use some of the key monitoring and remote configuration features of Mobile Analytics.

Step 1: Start the Mobile Analytics portal

Start the Mobile Analytics portal. If you don’t have a Mobile Analytics account, you’ll be prompted to create one. To create an account, enter your email address, a username, and a password. In response, activation details will be sent to your email address. Click the activation link to activate your account. You’ll then be returned to the portal sign in page.

Click Sign in now. This will display the App Overview page where you can view information about your apps. However, before you can view information on the page, you need to create at least one app.

Step 2: Create an app

To create an app, click Create New App. On the App Description page, enter a name and description for your app.

You have the option of disabling monitoring for your app. You might do this to reduce the monitoring overhead. Check the Disable all monitoring checkbox if you want to do this. If you do check this checkbox, you won’t be able to view analytics data for your app, that is, you won’t be able to monitor your app’s usage, examine error logs, or analyze network performance. However, you will still be able to remotely configure your app.

Click Save.

In response, the Mobile Analytics service registers your app and assigns values for the following:

App Id. A unique numeric ID assigned to the app.

Consumer Key. One of a pair of security credentials (with the secret key) provisioned by the Mobile Analytics service for the app.

Secret Key. One of a pair of security credentials (with the consumer key) provisioned by the Mobile Analytics service for the app.

You’ll need these values when you initialize the Mobile Analytics SDK as part of the actions you take to integrate Mobile Analytics into your application.

Now that your app is registered, select Overview in the main menu to display the App Overview page. You’ll see the following information about the app: name, description, owner (the ID of the person who created it), creation date, and update date.

Step 3: Integrate Mobile Analytics into your app

Before you can take advantage of Mobile Analytics functionality for your application, you need to integrate it into your application. How you perform the integration depends on the operating environment for your mobile app.

Step 4: Monitor usage

Now that you’ve integrated App Services, it will start monitoring data related to your app’s usage and performance. You can view the number of active users and sessions for your app by selecting Analytics in the main menu. This expands the App Usage menu item in the left navigation menu and opens Sessions. (You can also view app usage by clicking the monitor icon next to your app in the App Overview page).

Select a time span such as 6h (6 hours) over which to view the monitored data. You can also check a “Compare with” checkbox to compare the data with a previous time period such as yesterday or last week.

Below the graph of the active users and sessions, you’ll see a table that summarizes the data as well as a table that lists each data point recorded over the period.

You can also make App Usage selections in the left navigation menu to view the number of active sessions by app version, device configuration, device platform, or device model. You can also view session duration, that is, how long (on average) users are using your app.

Step 5: Examine error logs

View the number of errors logged for your app by selecting App Log Analysis in the left navigation menu. This expands the menu item and automatically selects Errors in the submenu. Select a time span over which to view the logged error data. You can also check a “Compare with” checkbox to compare the error data with a previous time period such as yesterday or last week.

Below the graph of the app errors, you’ll see a table that displays an error summary as well as a table that lists each logged error recorded over the period and its severity level.

You can also make App Log Analysis selections in the left navigation menu to view app errors by app version, device configuration, operating environment, and device model.

Step 6: Analyze network performance

Another aspect of your app that you can analyze through Mobile Analytics is the performance of the network in handling your app’s API requests. You can view network performance in a variety of ways. For example, you can request a network metrics overview that displays the number of requests made by your app over a period of time, the number of errors logged, and the average response time for requests.

To get the overview, select Network Performance in the left navigation menu. This expands the menu item and opens Network Metrics Overview. Select a time span over which to view the network performance data. You can also check a “Compare with” checkbox to compare the network performance data with a previous time period such as yesterday or last week.

Below the network metrics graph, you’ll see a summary table that lists the average response time, maximum response time, and number of network requests made by your app over the period. Another table displays a variety of data for requests made by your app to each web service over the period. Some of the data included are number of requests, average response time, error count, device platform, and network provider.

You can also make Network Performance selections in the left navigation menu to get views of network performance that focus specifically on network errors, response time, or on slow response time (that is, response time greater than 2 seconds). You can also request each of these views by network type, carrier, app version, and app configuration.

Step 7: Remotely configure your app

Mobile Analytics enables you to remotely manage the configuration of your mobile app. You can change various configuration settings for your application and then push out the changes. Customers get the updated app directly — there’s no need to deploy the updated app to an app store for customer download.

To remotely configure your app, select Configure in the main menu. This opens a configuration page, such as App Description. You can edit the information on that page or you can navigate to another configuration page, such as Default Configs. Configuration changes you make on the Default Configs page are applied to all devices. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

One of the things you can remotely configure is monitoring settings. For example, you can change the minimum error level that Mobile Analytics monitors. Change the minimum error level that is monitored from error to warning and apply the update to all devices that run your app. To do that, select Default Configs in the left navigation menu. Then select Warn in the Log Capture Levels drop-down menu.

You can also make selections in the left navigation menu to remotely configure your app for specific devices in a Beta test or for a percentage of devices as part of an A/B test.

Step 8: Navigate to other services

In addition to the Mobile Analytics service it provides, Apigee offers an API Analytics service that monitors the performance and use of APIs. When used together, Mobile Analytics and API Analytics give you full end-to-end visibility into your mobile app — from how your app performs on the device to how the APIs that your app uses perform. Together, Mobile Analytics and API Analytics, give you the ability to isolate issues and improve your mobile app. To learn more about Apigee analytic services, see Use the built-in charts.

Also notice that the Mobile Analytics portal provides “Switch To” links in the main menu to two other valuable services for developers: App Services and API consoles.

App Services enables you to create and manage your application data as well as manage your app users quickly and easily, with little or no need to write server-side code. Learn more in API BaaS features

An API Console simplifies the learning curve for using a provider’s API. The Console provides a GUI for exploring the API's resources and executing its methods. Apigee provides Consoles for a large and growing number of API providers. Learn more in What's an API Console?